School stress

What helps

• Let home be where your child can stop working. The school, the class teacher and the in-school enrichment that the year is built around will cover the academic preparation. Your job is to make home feel different from that, so your child has somewhere to recover.
• Praise effort and behaviour. “You kept going when that question was hard.” “You were kind to your sister tonight.” Say exactly what you saw, without judging how good it was. Praise that depends on outcomes adds pressure.
• Listen first, advise second. Sit down, and don’t argue with the feeling: “That sounds really hard. Tell me what happened.” Let them finish before you offer a single suggestion.
• Make home a secure base. Children with a stable home are very good, in time, at finding friends they fit with. Time you put into home life helps them socially too.

Some tips to try

Short pieces from the library, and a first thing to try from each.

• Say What You Have Noticed. When you ring the school, describe what you’ve seen, with dates, so staff know what to look for.
  • Before you ring, write down what you’ve noticed, with dates.
  • Start with the form tutor, and go to the head of year if it’s wider or isn’t improving.
  • For most things, start with your child’s form tutor, who sees them every day. If it’s about more than one lesson, or isn’t getting better, go to the head of year. If your child has, or may have, a special educational need, go to whoever leads learning support. If it is about your child’s safety, or about how a member of staff has treated them, do not start with the form tutor: ask for the designated safeguarding lead that day. And tell the school, briefly, about anything that’s changing at home, because a school can only allow for what it knows.
  theparentbook.com/quick-tips/say-what-you-have-noticed
• When the School Gets Your Role Wrong. The school may still treat you as the grandparent, even though you’re now the parent as well.
  • Send the school a written introduction with the legal documents attached.
  • Update all contact information; meet the class teacher before term begins.
  • Forms go to the absent parent, requests for permission go through the wrong channel, and the school nurse rings a mobile number that hasn’t been updated.
  theparentbook.com/quick-tips/the-schools-confusion-at-the-gate
• When the Teacher Is the Problem. Take your child seriously without taking sides, and listen for specific incidents you can act on.
  • Listen for the specific incident, not the general feeling.
  • Talk to the teacher in person, with curiosity, not accusation.
  • Treat the teacher as a colleague, not an opponent.
  theparentbook.com/quick-tips/when-the-teacher-is-the-problem

The rest of each tip, with more to try and why it works, is in the library.

Something to do together

A day with no 11+ in it. One day a week, and a few evenings, with no papers, no practice and no talk of the test. Keep it most weeks, and let it go when a week slips.

What it is for. A child preparing for an entrance test needs regular evidence that there is more to them than the test. A day off from it each week helps keep the test in proportion, for them and for you.

• The first step. Choose the day, and three evenings, when the preparation stops. Tell your child once, calmly: “On Saturdays there’s no 11+: no work, and no talking about it.”

Safety. If your child helps at the hob, an adult stays beside them and handles the hot pan.

When to get help. If your child is sick or sleeping badly before tests, the worry is getting worse, or it is affecting their eating or their wish to go to school, talk to their school and your GP. The routes under “If you need help right now”, at the foot of every page, are for when it cannot wait.

The other four steps, and your part in it, are in the library.

If you want to read further

• What to Do When School Is the Problem. For parents whose child has started dreading school. theparentbook.com/reader/what-to-do-when-school-is-the-problem
• The 11+ Year. For parents whose child is preparing for school entrance exams. theparentbook.com/reader/eleven-plus-and-the-pressure-of-the-thing-ahead

Worth your time

• A book for you: Never Enough, Jennifer Breheny Wallace. Journalist Jennifer Breheny Wallace, drawing on Suniya Luthar’s research, shows why children in high-achieving schools are at raised risk of distress, and why feeling that they matter at home protects them.
• A book to read together: Starving the Stress Gremlin, Kate Collins-Donnelly. A CBT workbook for ages 10 and up on what stress is, how it shows in body and mind, and how to manage it. Useful in the run-up to exams or a school move. uk.bookshop.org/p/books/starving-the-stress-gremlin-a-cognitive-behavioural-therapy-workbook-on-stress-management-for-young-people-kate-collins-donnelly/986f1a08e841272a
• Something to watch: When Kids Refuse To Go To School | Child Mind Institute, Child Mind Institute, YouTube. A specialist explains why children refuse school, usually anxiety rather than defiance, and why a gradual, planned return with the school works better than waiting it out. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC_SIxCx1U8
• Something to listen to: “She loved school until she didn’t”: the complex reality of school avoidance, Kooth Podcast, 29 min. Maddie describes how anxiety gradually stopped her going to school despite loving learning, what school felt like, and what she would tell her younger self. A young person’s view parents rarely hear. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/she-loved-school-until-she-didnt-the-complex-reality/id1547256556?i=1000703585948

Who else can help

This usually starts at school rather than at the surgery. The adults who see your child every day are the first people to tell, and often the fastest route to a change. The GP is there if it persists or deepens.

• Your child’s school. The pastoral lead, the head of year, or the form tutor. Free, already knows your child, and often the quickest way to get something changed at school. Before or alongside anything else. A school cannot act on what it has not been told, and what you bring is often what it did not have.
• The SENCo at your child’s school. The member of staff responsible for special educational needs. They hold the assessment routes, the in-school support, and the paperwork an EHCP needs. Ask for a meeting in writing, and ask what is already being tried under the graduated approach. This conversation usually has to happen before anything statutory can.

• Place2Be. Parenting Smart, written by the child mental health specialists who work in primary schools: short, practical articles and films on friendships, behaviour, worries and routines. For a child of five to eleven, when you want something you can read in ten minutes and try tonight. Place2Be’s counselling itself is only through partner schools. parentingsmart.place2be.org.uk
• YoungMinds. The UK’s young people’s mental health charity, with a free Parents Helpline, webchat and email, and a plain A to Z of the things parents worry about. When you want to talk through a worry about your child with someone who has heard it before, or read a clear first explanation of a named concern. Not a crisis line. Parents Helpline 0808 802 5544 · Mon, Thu, Fri 9.30am-4pm; Tue, Wed 9.30am-6pm · Webchat Mon-Fri 9.30am-4pm; email parents@youngminds.org.uk · Outside those hours the parents line is closed. The urgent routes on this page are open when it is not. www.youngminds.org.uk/parent/parents-helpline
• NHS: mental health advice for parents and carers. The NHS’s pages for parents, in one place: anxiety, low mood, anger, bereavement, arguments with teenagers, exam stress, and how to talk about feelings. When you want the NHS’s own account before anyone else’s. www.nhs.uk/mental-health/children-and-young-adults/advice-for-parents

The full list for school stress, with what each organisation does and when it is the right call, is at theparentbook.com/help/school-stress/services